What are the keywords of advice you would share with anyone who needs to accelerate the introduction, adoption, and profitability of digital content and products globally in 2018? While I have been asked this question several times for the last couple of months, my answer has been very similar regardless of industry and background. Think about investing in meeting the level of authenticity and empathy that your local customers require!

Content Creation

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced Adobe Creative Suite 5, the latest release of the design and development software platform. Focusing on interactivity, performance, and maximizing the impact of digital content and marketing campaigns across media and devices, the Creative Suite 5 product line includes full version upgrades of flagship creative tools while delivering significant workflow enhancements to designers and developers.

If 2009 was the worst of times for most of the information industry, it was a decidedly good year for manufacturers of digital e-reading alternatives. In a year when 34% of Americans reported cutting down on the number of books they were purchasing, the news of e-readers and tablet devices flying off shelves should be encouraging to businesses whose lifeblood is the provision of engaging content. Yet for publishers, the mainstream adoption of digital reading alternatives and ebooks brings huge financial challenges alongside the tantalizing opportunities.

Author-it Software Corporation (ASC) announced the launch of a web-based application that delivers content to users based on their profiles. The application, called Author-it Aspect, forms part of the Author-it Dynamic Assistance Platform.

Adobe premier development partner Managing Editor Inc. began distribution of Version 6 of its K4 Cross-Media Publishing Platform, an editorial management system designed for cross-media input and output including workflow and remote access functionality, as well as numerous other features and improvements.

To try to address the range and scope of its clients' conversion projects, LuraTech on February 1 announced that it will launch DocYard, a software platform enabling clients to build their own production-level document conversion and capture environments out of a series of modules designed to integrate a range of in-house needs, from different formats and source materials to outside software and even human resources.

In discussing the decision to shake up the CODiE Awards by moving the program from its traditional home during the spring NetGain conference in San Francisco, SIIA Content Division vice president Ed Keating noted that "there's not much difference between a rut and a groove." That premise of breaking out of a rut was certainly in evidence in the product strategies of the 15 winning companies, winnowed from more than one hundred nominees through two rounds of voting.

Aptara announced the release of eGen, a new ebook production platform. eGen is a web-based technology for converting high volumes of content into the ePub format for distribution to multiple ebook readers.

Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager of business productivity solutions at Adobe, did little to cushion the blow when he said to attendees at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference: "Enterprise software is failing." Story by ITI Reporter Jessica Tsai, CRM Magazine.